The disclosed embodiments of the present invention relate to processing video inputs, and more particularly, to a video processing apparatus for generating multiple video outputs by employing a hardware sharing technique.
The display apparatus (e.g., a display screen of a television) generally has a designated resolution for displaying the video content (e.g., a TV program). When the resolution of the video input is different from the resolution of the display apparatus, a scaler is implemented in a video processing apparatus to adjust the resolution of the video input to match the resolution of the display apparatus. When there is a need to provide multiple video outputs (e.g., a primary video output and a secondary video output) for video playback on display apparatuses with different resolution settings, the conventional video processing apparatus uses a scaler for processing the primary video output and an additional scaler for processing the secondary video output. For example, the primary video output is fed into the additional scaler to produce the secondary video output, where the primary video output and the secondary video output have the same video content but different resolution. As the additional scaler dedicated to processing the secondary video output is added to the video processing apparatus, the production cost is inevitably increased.
There is a need for an innovative design which is capable of providing an additional video output for video playback on another display apparatus without using any additional scaler.